August 2, 2010

• What Do I Really Get For Being in Charge?

  I seem to find myself in the leadership position often, whether I ask for it or not.  For example, last weekend I ended up coordinating a meet up in a state I don’t even live in and this past weekend I winded up being one of the people coordinating the biggest Asian cultural festival in the Mid-Atlantic. 

  
  One of my duties this past weekend: guiding this mascot around the festival for a few hours since the person in the suit could barely see.  Quite a memorable experience with this huge ball.

  I didn’t sought after those roles in both instances, but I ended up with the responsibility anyway.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m not totally complaining here.  While such a role asks for a lot of time, energy, and responsibility from me, I generally don’t mind the task at hand.  I feel pretty confident in my ability to get the job done so I’m not all too worried about that aspect.  If I feel what I do makes a difference and will benefit others, that’s enough motivation to keep me going.

  Of course, that’s not the only thing rewarding about being in charge.  As selfish as I feel this sounds, I get a lot of satisfaction when people acknowledge my efforts.  Such a simple gesture, but it means more to me than I would like to admit.  Everytime someone thanks me or tells me he or she recognizes the work I put in I feel like all the stress from the experience was worth it.  Everytime.

  You would think something like that would lose it value to me over time, but it most definitely have not.  I’ve learn to never take people’s kind words and acknowledgment for granted, especially after this one time when I felt I didn’t get the appreciation I deserved.  I’ve actually never really mentioned this to the people involved because I didn’t want it to be a big deal, but I have to admit that to this day I still feel bothered whenever I reminisce about that time.

  It was the end of my senior year of college and I was about to leave my college tennis club, a club I founded and was president for three years.  I was one of two main senior members leaving and there was a part of me that was expecting the team to do something for me in recognition of my services.  I ended up being let down when the team as a whole didn’t do anything special for me.  I think it hurted me a lot more because I actually did something for the other guy that was leaving.  He was our top player and I got everyone to sign a big picture frame I created for him.  He was a major part of our success and I wanted him to have something that showed the team and I will miss him.  When I realized I wasn’t going to be getting a similar treatment from my team, I felt such a heavy sense of disappointment that’s still there in the back of my mind.

  Like I said before, it’s a very selfish thought that I felt wasn’t needed to be mentioned to anyone at the time.  I don’t hold a grudge against my teammates for this omission.  Many of them are still my closest friends and some of them did say thanks to me later in private, which was cool.  I understood that many of them didn’t have much free time to plan anything since it was finals time.  Still, a part of me wishes the team could have found the time and taken the effort to do something for me, like I did for them all those years.

  I have to look at the upside.  Thanks to that experience, I’ve been greatly humbled and now do not expect people to acknowledge my efforts whenever I take on such a role.  I just assume they don’t notice, so when someone does recognizes what I do I cherish it as if it was the first and only time I’ve heard it.  I hope anyone that have ever given me appraisal knows that. 

  • 11:16 pm
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